I'm not 100% sure what the situation is, but I think the issue is that if some car manufacturer tried to import a large quantity of LFP cells from China they mi

I'm not 100% sure what the situation is, but I think the issue is that if some car manufacturer tried to import a large quantity of LFP cells from China they might be sued if they don't pay the patent licensing fees. Thus the price of LFP cells in China isn't the same as the price of LFP cells anywhere else purchased through legitimate channels. (I'm not sure if the cheap-ish cells you can get on AliExpress are paying those royalties or if they're kind of flying under the radar.) I'm hoping to see sub-$100 per kwh LFP cells sometime soon in the U.S. through some channel that ordinary people can order from. It would be a huge boon for EV conversion if the batteries weren't hugely expensive. I think that's probably attainable. LFP batteries aren't fundamentally expensive, you just need to have good automation, cheap energy, and economies of scale. The input materials are relatively cheap. China's main advantage besides the patent thing is that they've been quietly building their battery manufacturing capabilities and supply chains for a couple decades, and it's hard to compete with that.